sticking his hands into the gussets of his breeches,
"to hear something talking to me within that leg. I then found I had the
singular faculty of entering the being of my patient. Once within his
skin I saw a marvellous number of little creatures which moved, and
thought, and reasoned. Some of them lived in the body of the man, others
lived in his mind. His ideas were things which were born, and grew, and
died; they were sick and well, and gay, and sad; they all had special
countenances; they fought with each other, or they embraced each other.
Some ideas sprang forth and went to live in the world of intellect. I
began to see that there were two worlds, two universes,--the visible
universe, and the invisible universe; that the earth had, like man, a
body and a soul. Nature illumined herself for me; I felt her immensity
when I saw the oceans of beings who, in masses and in species, spread
everywhere, making one sole and uniform animated Matter, from the stone
of the earth to God. Magnificent vision! In short, I found a universe
within my patient. When I inserted my knife into his gangrened leg I
cut into a million of those little beings. Oh! you laugh, madame; let me
tell you that you are eaten up by such creatures--"

"No personalities!" interposed Monsieur de Calonne. "Speak for yourself
and for your patient."

"My patient, frightened by the cries of his animalcules, wanted to stop
the operation; but I went on regardless of his remonstrances; telling
him that those evil animals were already gnawing at his bones. He made a
sudden movement of resistance, not understanding that what I did was for
his good, and my knife slipped aside, entered my own body, and--"

"He is stupid," said Lavoisier.

"No, he is drunk," replied Beaumarchais.

"But, gentlemen, my dream has a meaning," cried the surgeon.

"Oh! oh!" exclaimed Bodard, waking up; "my leg is asleep!"

"Your animalcules must be dead," said his wife.

"That man has a vocation," announced my little neighbor, who had stared
imperturbably at the surgeon while he was speaking.

"It is to yours," said the ugly man, "what the action is to the word,
the body to the soul."

But his tongue grew thick, his words were indistinct, and he said no
more. Fortunately for us the conversation took another turn. At the end
of half an hour we had forgotten the surgeon of the king's pages,
who was fast asleep. Rain was falling in torrents as we left the
supper-table.

"The lawy